Virality and vanity

Extrapolations from my failings as a writer

Today, I’ll be exploring several topics through my own failings: the degradation of thought; the effect of reader feedback; the vanity stoked by the attention economy; the male gaze and me; how writing forces a look in the mirror; and a meditation on George Orwell.

Subscriber update

I’m taking a two-month break to quiet my mind and allow ideas to percolate uninterrupted. I have paused subscription billing for the duration because the business model creates pressure to produce. I’ve closed the gender chapter of my writing journey because it’s led me to the next thing — epistemology. It was never about gender at the bottom, but the incentives in institutions and groups that produce the suppression of truth. I had to work through gender as a lens to understand my relationship with reason and emotion, and I’ve succeeded.

All online platforms degrade thought

The incentive for any communication platform, including Substack, is to maximize usage, which means to monopolize attention. I don’t cons…